Chapter 2
“Damn Oscar.” Dane felt like punching the man in front of him, but Pedro looked too much like a vagabond who’d misplaced his Santa Claus costume. “What’s Oscar’s real name?”
“Antonio.”
“He checks out, Dane. I wouldn’t bring—” Cap said.
Dane gave Cap a silencing look and then went back to studying the would-be Santa. “So what’s your story? Who are you?”
“Pedro. Father Pedro. I came here to help you—”
Dane snorted. “Far too late for that, Padre Pedro. My soul was consigned to hell long ago. I don’t need any of your f—”
“Never mind,” Shana said. She stepped in between them and handed the man a cup of what smelled like hot cocoa.
Dane breathed in the scent and it brought him back too many years.
It brought him back to a time with his mother.
And his father. To the last time he’d celebrated Christmas with any real joy.
A flash of last year’s Christmas with Shana steamed the memory in his mind and replaced it. He looked at her.
“Let’s do this right. Hot cocoa for everyone, girlie.
” The smile she gave him was over the top and disproportionate for the circumstances.
The lead still weighed in his gut. The darkness still surrounded his sightlines, threatening to close in.
“Don’t get excited,” he said. “It’s not like I was getting any sleep with a stranger in the house. ”
“That’s the Christmas spirit,” Cap said.
He escorted the would-be Santa friend of Oscar to the dining table.
Shana must have scrounged some decorations from somewhere.
A small poinsettia, which looked real, sat in the middle and red and green doilies littered the table at intervals like place settings.
The old man held his mug with two hands and took a sip of the steaming drink before he sat.
Dane was surprised he didn’t yelp at the liquid burning his throat.
Either he was used to pain or was made of stern stuff or he was numb.
He didn’t look numb. If Dane looked in the mirror, he’d see what numb looked like.
Dane was desensitized to all pain. All joy.
For the moment. He knew the pain would return.
He didn’t ever expect a return of anything like joy.
Shana stepped past him as she handed him a mug.
Her scent wafted, mingling with the cocoa and he took a deep breath.
He remembered taking pleasure in her scent, but the memory only caused a twitch of pain like a pinprick to his dying heart.
Her gaze met his eyes and she looked miserable.
A reflection of what she saw inside him, he presumed.
The pinprick deepened. He tensed and banished her from his soul.
He couldn’t care. Didn’t want to care. Had no care left in him.
Dane sat at the table with the others while they watched him because there was nothing else to do. Feeling like a granite statue of himself going through the motions, as he scraped the chair around and plunked his mug on the table.
“What trouble has Oscar got himself into this time?” It seemed like the right question to ask.
“No trouble.”
“Why did he send you?” Shana asked in a gentle voice compared to his own scraping croak.
The man didn’t speak immediately, but studied Dane, taking some sort of measure. Dane knew the old man would find nothing but the petrified hunk of life turned to rock that he now was.
“He said this time you were in trouble.”
Dane scoffed and sounded like an old man. His soul was old—ancient—if that counted.
“Tell him he’s too late. Finish your drink and be on your way before the snow gets too deep.”
It hurt Dane to speak so callously but he had a need to be mean, to vent the meanness and he couldn’t afford to vent on Shana, didn’t want to go that low.
Mr. Padre made a perfect target of himself.
A stranger asking for trouble. Or asking about trouble, at least. Now he’d found it. He could go home.
The padre surprised him, not by taking a long steady sip of the hot drink, although that was unusual enough considering it probably scalded him, but because when he finished and placed his mug on the scratched table, he stood.
The old man was prepared to leave as Dane had requested.
Cap stood too. Dane shifted his gaze to Cap. Knew he was going to lambaste him. The padre knew it too and put a hand up to stop him.
“No problem. Mr. Blaise is right. I have no business here. I can’t help a man if he doesn’t want help.”
“How about if you stay and help me. Until after Christmas.” Shana spoke from her seat and avoided Dane’s eyes, or so it seemed to him.
The padre unbottled a special sunshine smile then.
“Come with me,” he said.
Dane stared at her and she faced him. A bubble of fear floated from his gut to his chest and squeezed so that he couldn’t breathe.
Fury fueled his heart. Any sign of his former numb state flew away in a ghostly wisp leaving him cold, immobile, and filled with fierce, loathsome fear.
But he showed none of this. Old training saved him from showing that fear. Ever.
Something about this strange man and his proposition snapped Shana’s resolve, or maybe it gave her a different resolve. She dared look at Dane, allowed herself to really see him. Or tried to. He looked like a shadow, an empty vessel. The rock of granite that once held his vitality looked hollow.
And then he didn’t. Hell, she still couldn’t figure him out much less help him.
She faced the old man and stood.
“I’ll go with you. Let me pack a bag.”
Cap stood, “What the hell? It’s Christmas tomorrow. It’s snowing—”
“If you hurry, you’ll catch the last ferry of the day.” Dane spoke as if he knew, as if he’d just hung up from talking to the MV Steamship Authority in Vineyard Haven.
The whip of his words, steadfast and conversational and unfeeling, brought tears up. She squeezed them back, willed the hurt to lash back. Damn him.
She said nothing, but headed for the short hall to her room intending to throw on a coat and pack everything she owned into her bag.
The padre stalled her. “You are doing the right thing,” he called after her.
She wanted to shout at him, “How the hell do you know?” His advice should have comforted her, reassured her, but since this stranger knew less than nothing, she felt unsure and stumbled internally even as she stormed to her room, shoving past Dane.
She slammed her bedroom door behind her.
Touching him, even if it was a quick shove, had been a mistake.
His flesh had been real and warm and solid and so like the real Dane it tugged her into misery.
Swiping at tears, she pulled her one large duffel bag from the back of the closet where it had gathered dust and emptied the bureau drawers into it.
There was a framed photo on her dresser top of her and Dane.
Sassy had taken it and given it to her. It was taken at Anatoly Ivanov’s granddaughter’s wedding when they’d been working security and were all dressed up.
Before the shooting had begun. They’d been smiling.
Without stopping to analyze or question or waiver, she snatched the photo and stuffed it in her bag then zipped it up and slung it over one shoulder and slung the bag holding her Century Arms CZ 82 over the other.
She looked around and sighed. She’d miss the beach shack and its arsenal of weapons. And maybe even its owner.
When she opened the door Cap stood in the hall on the other side of the threshold. He looked worried and caring and irritated—like stormy weather dressed as harmless snowflakes, cold and wonderful and heartwarming all at once.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he whispered.
“You’re the one who brought the padre here—”
“Shana, I mean it—don’t leave like this. I’ll be worried about both of you then and my Christmas will be completely shot to hell.”
She smiled and reached up and touched his face.
He softened and she leaned in and gave him a hug.
He was warm and yielding and hugged her back, solidly and comfortably like perfect fitting mittens.
She loved him. Cap had been her best friend and confidante and she would never let that go no matter what.
“I’m sorry, Cap.” She knew he cared about her. About Dane. It wasn’t about his Christmas. He had friends on the island and family not too far off. He was whole as far as she could tell.
“You don’t even know where the hell he’s taking you—”
“I thought you would know.”
Cap shook his head.
“Where did he come from?”
“Off the boat. He called from the ferry landing in Vineyard Haven. He hasn’t been here more than a couple of hours. I don’t know much about him. Couldn’t raise Oscar on the phone, but he’ll call me back soon.”
“I thought you said you vetted him?”
“I ran a criminal check. He’s clean.”
“Under the name Padre Pedro.”
“I ran his prints.”
“Padre Pedro isn’t the problem.” She didn’t bother stating that Dane was the problem since it was too obvious. She blew out a breath. “I don’t know what else to do. Maybe he needs a break from me.” She took another deep breath to gather herself and stood straight. “I need a break from him.”
“Permanent?”
She had no idea what the answer to that was. “I suspect the padre will help me come up with the answer to that one.” She sounded desperate. She was.
Cap stepped aside and she hefted the bags into balance and walked back down the hallway and into the kitchen.
Dane and the padre stood there blocking her way.
She had to get past Dane to get to the door where the padre was ready and waiting.
He had a jacket on now. An old mud-colored Carhart.
Shana knew it was Dane’s old jacket because she’d bought him a new one to replace it last winter.
She hated the sting behind her eyes, the strike to her heart and the tightening of her chest. Damn him.
“I’m leaving, Dane.” She managed to sound strong and sure.
“I know.” He stood still. And in the next instant when he moved, when he should have embraced her in a farewell hug, he instead stood back. He moved from her path to let her go.
Something pushed her forward against the pull of her heart, the pull of him and everything that he was, everything that he meant to her.
Something stronger than pride propelled her to the door without a look back, not even a quick glance over her shoulder at his face, the handsome, strong, beaten, sad face that she loved.
She saw it in her mind’s eye the way she wanted to see it—without the soul-crushing defeat and sorrow—the way he’d been last summer before his mother’s visit. Closing her eyes tight she pushed open the door and stepped out into the cold cleansing snow and headed for the Jeep.